モラエスの庭 : (3)異邦人のまなざし

This paper is an essay on Moraes’s O ‟Bon-odori„ em Tokushima, part of the outcomes of the Project Studies by the activities in 2012 of Moraes’s Studies Group launched in July 31, 2010. The members of Moraes’s Studies Group, T. Miyazaki (English Literature), M. Satoh (Plant Physiology), M. Sakai (Clinical Psychology), all at the Institute of Socio-Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokushima, have been continuing to try to analyze Moraes’s works and to approach a new facet of Moraes’s biographical aspects. Moraes was fascinated by the far-east Japan, and fell in love with Ó-Yoné, who died soon after the marriage. After her death Moraes decided to live in Tokushima, which was Ó-Yoné’s hometown. He lived with Ko-Haru, Ó-Yoné’s niece, for a while until she died from tuberculosis at the age of 23. His life until his death in Tokushima was a kind of hermit, disregard of his fame as Consul General and Navy high-rank Officer of Portugal, and other financial merits entailed with them.
Moraes published O ‟Bon-odori„ em Tokushima in 1916 after Ó-Yoné died. This work might be regarded as based on the forms of diary and essay, seemingly as reports from Tokushima to Bento Carqueja, editor of Comércio do Porto (Porto Commercial Newspaper) in Portugal. He consistently wrote these installment reports from Tokushima in the eyes of a stranger, putting some distance between him and the people in there. Everything seen in the eyes of Moraes wore some beautiful visional aspect because of his memory of Ó-Yoné. He expressed his distress at the attitudes of Tokushima people at some sections in this book; that is, he was seen as a‘ke-tojin,’an alien. This discrepancy and distancing from the people among whom he lived as a hermit, he seemed to see the deep gap between him and the people he loved, leading to the pathetic outcry at the final part of his letters to Bento Carqueja, the editor. This tentative paper intends to open a new perspective in a rather fixed image of Moraes and studies about him.